How the Hell did we get in this pickle? And how do we get out?
Our leaders have chosen not to work together, allowing themselves to be separated by dogma and philosophy, while we all float in the same boat. As a result, the American Space Program has never been consistently directed or funded.
At the same time, all the program stakeholders failed pretty miserably at communicating that much that is fundamental to current technology, has been launched from the Cape. All the payloads that flew here loom large in the chain that gives us our ʻe-ed ʼ up lives.
We must now depend on the good graces (and whopping bills) of a country whose interests are often not ours, to get a greatly diminished number of our folks up to the 100B$ ISS, where others now reap the fruits of our labors.
How do we fix this lousy hole we are in?
Since politics is inherent in the forming of our policy decisions, the Leadership, all up, of the US, must agree on a phaseable goal to colonize the Moon, the most convenient (close, laden with life-giving raw materials, and easily buildable) platform to extend homo sapiens ability to live where there is no air. Then on to mining asteroids and heading out to the next outpost, Mars, once we have settled Luna.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/ Lunar Impact,
onboard an Atlas 5 at KSC Pad 41
Credit: LB/BlueSawtooth
